Navigating Your Homeowners Insurance Coverage on Your Roof

Navigating Your Homeowners Insurance Coverage on Your Roof

Your roof is an important investment, and you want to do everything you can to keep it in good shape. But sometimes Mother Nature has her own ideas, and she unleashes high winds, hail, or heavy snowfall. That’s when homeowners insurance can come into play. Many of us pay our homeowners insurance premiums without really thinking about what our policy actually covers, or what our deductibles happen to be. But when a storm dumps several feet of wet snow on our roof, or blows a tree down on our house, suddenly we become glad that we have been paying those premiums, and we start to get curious about our homeowners policy coverage!

Learn About Your Policy

It’s always a good idea to learn about your coverage before disaster strikes, but if you wait until the damage is done, it’s still not too late. Pull out your policy information or call your insurance company and ask them about your coverage. Most policies cover home damage from unexpected weather events like storms. However, they also take into consideration the age and condition of your roof, so if it is very old or in bad condition to begin with, they will likely cover less than they would for a newer roof. Also, damage from things other than storms, such as ice dams, may not be covered if they are considered preventable.

Get Professional Advice

If your roof gets damaged from wind, hail, or heavy snowfall, the best thing to do after learning about your insurance coverage is to call a reliable roofing contractor to come and inspect the damage. Be mindful about who you call–using a reputable company that has been in business for a number of years and has references on file is always the best bet. Roofman fits that in that category, so keep us in mind!

Once onsite your roofing professional should take pictures and document details of the damage, then help you decide whether it’s worth filing a claim with your insurance company. If the damage is minor, it may not be worth filing a claim, depending on the amount of your deductible, and the fact that filing multiple claims can sometimes raise your premium rates. In that case, it would make more sense to make the repairs out of your own pocket. If the damage is more extensive, you would want to call your insurance company and file a claim.

Once you submit a claim to your insurance company, they will send out an adjuster to inspect the damage. The sooner after the storm all of this is done, the better, so the adjuster has a more accurate idea of the damage. Once the insurance company decides what they will cover as far as repairs or replacement goes, you may choose your roofing company and proceed.

Nobody really relishes the idea of a storm damaging their roof or dealing with insurance paperwork, but sometimes things like that happen in life! At Roofman, we are here to advise you in that process and help you get the repairs or the replacement roof you need.